"I Love Books The Way Some Girls Love Shoes"

Archive for the tag “Writing”

I am on vacation this week so I thought I would drop in and write a new blog post. I am currently re-reading “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I promise this blog won’t turn into an Elizabeth Gilbert fan page, I am still in the midst of finishing her new book, “Big Magic.”

I stopped “Big Magic” to return to “Eat, Pray, Love” for some life advice. I assume many of you know, she keeps an active Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, so I follow her regularly on all three.

I love reading her words of wisdom daily or almost daily and trying to figure out how to infuse what she tells us into my own life. She is so wise.

I read “Eat, Pray, Love” for the first time around the time when it came out, in 2006.. I read it because it was the book to read at the moment. But I never soaked in what she was trying to say in her book.

This time around, I read it again because I needed to. I needed my dosage of Liz on a grander scale than just her daily posts on Facebook. I needed her mentoring about life. I wanted to know how she went through some tough times and got through, what was her method?

(Spoiler Alert ahead!)

Anyway, she recently announced that she was getting separated from the man she met in the last chapter of “Eat, Pray, Love.” It was shock to all of her followers I am sure. But it made me applaud her, she always ran to the beat of her own drum, a wanderer of sorts through life. She was inspiring.

I then began to look back at other writers I loved in my life… with the exception of Laura Ingalls Wilder, most of my favorite writers weren’t married. Jane Austen, not married. Louisa May Alcott, to my research… never married.

Liz was married once, and now this would be her second marriage. These famous writers have something in common – independence. They are strong enough in their own minds and hearts to carry on their own away from the confines of marriage. I applaud them.

So many women these days, particularly women my age (33 and older) feel that it is a must or be viewed as some sort of failure in life. I am not married, even though I so want to be, but I also enjoy this life.

I am a successful writer, living on my own doing my own thing… I have good friends and family. I have accomplished a lot in my life.

I don’t pretend to know the reason behind Liz’s separation from her husband, it could be a myriad of things, but I still applaud her strength and ability to move forward with her life.

I applaud all of the other authors before her too, that found the strength to remain independent in their own lives and in their craft.

As I read the next 50 pages of “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert, so many thoughts came to my mind. This book, is very much like a tutorial on living a creative life and has been at times all over the place with thoughts and ideas that it was often hard to keep up.

Here are some main points that caught my eye that I think are worth sharing: